Never again will wind and solar power outfits be able to rely on the bipartisan support for subsidies to renewables, critical to their ‘business’ models.

Generating power at the chaotic whims of nature’s wonder fuels means that wind and solar outfits depend (and will always depend) on a mix of mandates, targets, subsidies and penalties to force power retailers to take a product which, otherwise, has no commercial value.

As the National Energy Guarantee (effectively the Renewable Energy Target on steroids) disintegrated in the hands of Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg, so-called ‘business groups’ (really just a front for those profiting from the greatest wealth transfer in Australian history) ranted and raved about the need for investment certainty. On their case, absent the NEG, the chaos faced by investors would equal the chaos faced by power retailers seeking to rely on wind and solar to meet their customer’s daily power needs. This, they said, would never do.

When it comes to wind and solar there really is only one ‘certainty’: not one turbine or solar panel would have ever been erected in the absence of massive subsidies, mandates and targets. That, of course, is not the certainty that troubles the profiteers.

What troubles them is that, one day soon, wind and solar will be forced to compete on a level playing field, against conventional generators.

RE zealots keep telling us that wind and solar power is free and getting cheaper all the time. However, the panic hits the moment when it looks like they’ll actually get to face their competitors in a true, head-to-head.

Now, instead of obtaining the NEG and the certainty they were looking for, those seeking to keep the gravy train running are petrified of what comes next.

Here’s the news: the NEG is dead and the days of subsidies to wind and solar are all but over.

If the new PM, Scott Morrison hopes to clock up any serious political flying time as leader, he should be listening very carefully to the 40 rebel MPs who crushed his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull.

The revolt began over the rocketing power prices that have resulted from an obsession with intermittent and chaotic wind and solar (see above).

STT hears that the rebels will not let up until the mandated subsidies for wind and solar are slashed, effective immediately. Those crowing about the need for certainty, will get certainty, alright. But, not the kind of certainty that they’ve been happily banking on since 2001, when the Federal RET began.

Terry McCrann tackles the topic head-on in the piece below.

ScoMo, don’t listen to disgraceful business lobby groups
The Australian
Terry McCrann
25 August 2018

It is the business community that is the bigger disgrace — a whimpering, snivelling, complaining, utterly unhelpful and pathetic disgrace.

The only thing worse than “what will the rest of the world think?” as a lame and self-loathing criticism of policy, is the demand that “Canberra deliver certainty”. Never mind if it was the utterly stupid and what would have been a disastrously self-imploding NEG, the so-called national energy guarantee.

All that it was going to “guarantee” was that electricity would remain unnecessarily expensive, unreliable and absolutely not plentiful. Inexpensive, reliable and plentiful energy are three things we are entitled to have and used to have until the Gaia-saving lunacy of global warming enveloped the elites.

It is important to never, never forget that the ultimate “balancing” of demand and supply under the NEG was going to be “persuading” pensioners to turn off their air conditioners (if they could afford one) in summer and their heaters in winter. That’s when, of course, the wind wasn’t blowing.

Now let me be very clear in identifying who and what I mean by the “business community”.

I am most certainly not referring to the hundreds of thousands of real business people, struggling out there to build and run businesses, to create jobs, to generate economic activity and so the surpluses that really pay for health and education, national security and everything else. And have to do so in the face of punishing levels of taxation and red tape and intrusive government.

I am talking about the so-called “peak business lobby groups”, all the way up to and especially including the Business Council; and the CEOs and especially the chairmen of the major public companies, with few — with very, very, few — and honourable exceptions.

They have not only failed utterly and miserably in their own and the national interest cases; when strength of purpose and clarity in objective reality were needed, they went missing, figuratively hiding under their plush desks.

But their whining complaint about the lack of certainty from the politicians in Canberra exposed them as being prepared to sell the nation and every single Australian down the river, so long as they could continue to make money.

The two big issues of the last year or so capture this business community failure perfectly, if in somewhat different ways: energy policy and the “big company” tax cut, although the failure on the first is far more fundamentally entrenched, going back a decade.

Instead of calling out the global warming lunacy, which is the foundation on which the NEG is built, these co-called business leaders — terrified of being identified as climate deniers (like the magnificent trio of Maurice Newman, David Murray and Dick Warburton) — mouthed the usual pieties and called for “certainty” and “market solutions”.

There is simply no way you can build a viable, credible power-generation system on the foundation of more and more so-called renewable energy. You cannot have both “cuts to emissions (of carbon dioxide)” and cheaper and reliable electricity: the supposed goals of the NEG. This is not a matter of ideology but of reality. And all those so-called business leaders who claimed the NEG would “deliver certainty” just beclowned themselves, announcing they were not fit to run a corner store.

Would they care to take a look at the events of the past week? Oh sure, the NEG guaranteed “certainty”. And the yawning absence of that so-called certainty was just within the Liberal Party.

What about Bill Shorten and Labor promising to nearly double the renewable energy mandate from 26 to 45 per cent? That would certainly give investors confidence to invest in multi-billion new generation capacity. Not.

Even “beclowning” is too gentle a word to describe business leadership claims that the NEG — or indeed any policy initiated under the Paris Climate Farce commitments — would be “technology-neutral”.

Oh sure, it’s utterly neutral after the asterisk: you must take 26 per cent of your power from so-called renewables.

The only certainty to be gained in electricity generation is one delivered by the reality of real power generation; not the fantasy of renewables, whether or not they come with batteries included.

A rather more conventional idiocy among our business elite has been exposed in the context of the company tax saga, culminating in the final burial of the “big company” tax cut this week. Yes, the “elite” was on the side of the angels (if not those angels on the head of a pin). It is mindless to suggest — as Shorten and Labor do — that in a world of plummeting company rates and instantly mobile investment capital, we can stay at 30 per cent.

But in order to actually facilitate a tax cut, business had to get smart once a certain event came along. That event was the banking royal commission. It became utterly untenable to continue to argue for a $17 billion tax cut for the big banks.

The business elite should have seized the reality, both arguing for the excising of the banks from the tax cut (not such a big loss to them with dividend franking) and providing government with the mechanism to achieve it.

Instead, business (and government) just kept beating their collective heads stubbornly against that brick wall; and as a consequence nobody (at the bigger end) will get the tax cut and the nation is the serious loser.

With friends as supine and stupid as the business elite, the right-thinking politicians, such as they are in Canberra, surely don’t need enemies.

Now, a final word on the new Liberal leadership team. I suggest it can work; that Scott Morrison is actually better placed to unify the party around rational policies than Peter Dutton (and whomever would have been his deputy) would have been.

But that is only provided he does three things. One, bring Tony Abbott back into the cabinet. Two, adopt reality as the basis of policy. And three, completely ignore the “business community”, but by all means listen to real business people.The Australian

Meet the new Minister for Energy, Angus Taylor.

In breaking news, the wind and solar industries in Australia have just met their nemesis.

Scott Morrison has appointed Angus Taylor as Energy Minister and Marise Payne as Foreign Minister as he unveiled a “next generation” cabinet team that has kept Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce on the backbench.

“Angus Taylor has an incredible background working outside of this place and inside this place to solve complex and difficult problems,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said as he unveiled his first ministry at a press conference in Canberra late on Sunday.

Peter Dutton will remain with the Home Affairs role but will lose the immigration part of the portfolio, with David Coleman to be Immigration Minister. …

The Australian

Angus Taylor has been itching to deliver reliable and affordable power to all Australians, since he entered Parliament in 2013.

Now, as the new Energy Minister, Angus Taylor is about to do just that.

Expect renewable energy rent-seekers – and the zealots that do their bidding – to start slashing their wrists, right about now. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

But, for Australian households and businesses, Taylor’s elevation brings an end to the days of subsidised wind and solar; and the prospect of all Australians once again enjoying affordable power, reliably delivered.

Keep watching this space for more on what promises to be a very rapid return to energy sanity.

SA plastic recycler a victim of the certainty demanded by RE rent-seekers.

Comments

This is wonderful news. I hope the Coalition leadership takes the bit between its collective teeth and sweeps the entire RET and Paris accord into the dustbin of Australian history. And the halls of Canberra’s public service buildings could do with a good dose of salts too.
Kudos to the few business leaders who dared put their reputations on the line by daring to go against the flow of sucking up to the PM.

I met Angus at some of the many anti wind industrial site meetings -especially the Jupiter fiasco-and on other occasions and found him to be an honest broker genuinely concerned with the plight of those whose lives would be ruined by this almighty scam. However it will be interesting to see if he manages to fend off the powerful and wealthy vested interests that often, quietly and stealthily, control/influence governments. They are a cunning bunch and will do anything and everything to depose him if he doesn’t fall into line and threatens their ‘investments’. It’s great news that he has the portfolio regardless. Interesting to see if he can deliver and how long he lasts.

I think that there will be very few inroads into the RE debacle.
Even if the Libs do a backflip they still have a hostile senate.
The next election will certainly have electricity prices high on the concern list for most aussies. It remains to be seen whether the Libs have the cojones and common sense required to walk away from ‘Paris’ and kill the RET.

I won’t be voting for a party that is not willing to walk away from the ‘Sham’ Paris agreement, and kill off RE subsidies.

It seems fitting that on a day the legendary American senator John McCain died, a man who was a great patriot and put his country first we at last might be seeing a fight back against the greatest fraud of all time.

To all those who have fought so hard over many years a hearty congratulations.

Judging by the hysteria already on social media about Angus Taylor’s appointment there will be many a strong headwind from the rentseekers and zealots.

…..and in a side note in the interest of the well being of Messiah’s , Pretty boys and all lovers of Demis Roussos’s music within the leafy suburbs of Melbourne I call on all social welfare workers to be on a heightened alert.